Agricultural machines called balers are provided to gather cut crop material and secure it together in bundles of cut crop material called “bales”. In one arrangement, plants are severed in the field and laid down in windrows to dry. These windrows are later lifted off the field by balers and secured into bales. In another arrangement, the crop plants are severed from the ground and are conveyed into a baler, sometimes conveyed directly, sometimes conveyed after some preliminary processing, such as separating grains from the rest of the plant.
It has been proposed recently to attach round and square balers to combines to continuously form, wrap, and eject bales of crop residue as the combine travels through the fields gathering crops.
In one arrangement, shown as several variants in US20110023441A1, US20110023442A1, and US20110023732A1, a round baler is attached to a combine to directly receive material ejected therefrom. The baler has a flat conveyor belt disposed below the chopper of the combine to receive chopped material directly therefrom. The material falls upon the conveyor belt and is conveyed rearward to a feeder (item 196 in the publication) having augers on each end to convey the cut crop material (e.g. MOG) laterally inwardly toward the opening of the baler. This machine is described as a modification to a conventional round baler, such as a Hesston model 5545, 5556, 5556A, or 5546 baler.
In another arrangement, shown in US20030093979A1 a harvester pulls a round baler provided with a hopper for receiving cut crop material. An endless belt conveyor at the bottom of the hopper receives cut crop material from the bottom of the hopper and carries the cut crop material rearward into the baling chamber of the round baler.
In another arrangement, shown in US20080271428A1, a towed round baler is shown having a crop pickup disposed ahead of an accumulator chamber. The crop pickup picks material up off the ground, lifts it up and deposits it into the accumulator, which has an open bottom feeding a conveyor belt that directly feeds the round baler mechanism.
Of the above examples, only the first machine (the '441 publication) is described as being made by incorporating new elements into an existing round baler. These modifications require extensive changes that are time consuming to make, including removal of the existing crop pickup for picking up windrowed crop.
What is needed is a round baler configured to be towed behind a combine for continuously harvesting crop in the field that is more readily and quickly convertible from a standard round baler.